Samsung Electronics had talks with MediaTek over cooperation in the second half of 2014 and MediaTek is expected to become an application processor (AP) supplier of Samsung's smartphones in the second half of 2015 at the soonest to help fill up the gap in the Korea-based vendor's product lineup.

China's second-tier and white-box players have recently turned their focuses to dual-OS (operating system) tablets and are aggressively preparing to ship these products to overseas markets.

More China-based smartphone vendors, including second-tier Gionee, Zopo and Haier, appear to have geared up efforts to promote sales of their smartphones in overseas markets, according to Digitimes Research.

Taiwan's top-three IC foundries will see their combined revenues increase 38.6% from a year earlier in the first quarter of 2015, according to Digitimes Research.

South Korea recorded production value of KWR2.42 trillion (US$2.3 billion) for robots mainly used in the industrial segment during 2013, growing on year by 6.5%, while KWR737.6 billion was for exports to China and emerging economies, up 23.9%,according to Digitimes Research, citing sources form the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement.

With 4G service subscribers accounting for 13% of Taiwan's overall telecom service users and the number of smartphone users in the country surpassing 13.5 million in 2014, Taiwan's environment is already mature enough to develop a payment system using near-field communication (NFC) technology on smartphones...

China's smartphone application processor (AP) shipments enjoyed strong growth in the second half of 2014 as the country's 4G ecosystem gradually matured. However, the 4G growth came at the expense of 3G AP sales...

The launch of Google's Nova project and Cablevision's Freewheel services will help push the deployment of Cable Wi-Fi as well as the implementation of Wi-Fi Only Phone and Wi-Fi First telecom services, according to Digitimes Research.

Smart home applications are one of the major focuses as part of the ever-growing IoT industry in 2015 and there is much discussion over how to control and connect appliances such as thermostats, refrigerators and washing machines...

In light of slowing sales of high-end smartphones, vendors including LG Electronics, Sony Mobile Communications and Acer all highlighted their new entry-level and mid-range models at the recently concluded MWC 2015 targeting emerging markets, according to Digitimes Research.